


Things We're Still Trying To Understand

by two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat



Category: Lumberjanes
Genre: F/F, Gen, Introspection, Love, and also you’re in love with your best friend, and you're thinking about everything., but neither of you think to talk about it much, file this under ‘fics i wrote in quarantine’, in-between passing notes around the cabin to your cabin mates, passing notes, that feeling when it's some unknown hour in the middle of the night, when your counselor thinks you’re asleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23642146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat/pseuds/two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat
Summary: It's quarantine o'clock time to write the Jo-centric fic.
Relationships: Jo/April (Lumberjanes)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	Things We're Still Trying To Understand

**Author's Note:**

> listening to early 2000s barbie movie soundtracks and writing lumberjanes fanfiction this is truly living.

There’s something to be said for luck, she thinks. 

That’s how they’ve gotten this far, right? Luck? Jo can’t find any other reason. Except for how well they all work together - with Molly solving puzzles and Mal making plans and Ripley willing to run into any fight, and April is… well, April’s wonderful. And Jo’s a part of it, too. They work together like all the little gears she puts into her robots, grinding away at any problems they can find. But there’s a fair amount of luck there, too. She knows that. The rest of them know it, too. They talk about it at night, when Jen thinks they’re asleep. They spread ideas and rumors and jokes from bunk to bunk in a little chain of whispers. On the nights when Jen’s more diligent at trying to keep them from staying up, they’ll end up passing notes. Mal’s blocky handwriting will start it off - asking about what they all thought of the day’s adventures, and  _ What the junk, wasn’t that insane?  _ And then Molly’s lopsided cursive follows, making notes on the monsters and puzzles. Ripley’s handwriting is next, large print, often smudged, and often just talking about how cute the animals they encountered were. Then the note passes to April, who dots her i’s with hearts, and writes in pink pen. She’ll say something about the danger, the adrenaline rush, the love she has for the fight. Jo always pays a little more attention to April’s part, though she doesn’t like to admit it. Jo always pays a little more attention to April, really, because she’s so  _ April,  _ and how could anyone not? She doesn’t just light up the room when she walks in it, she makes it go supernova. She’s strong and she’s smart and she’s loud, and she always knows what she wants. And she’s funny, and kind, and she’s creative and passionate. She’s April. Jo loves that about her. 

There’s something to be said for love, she thinks. 

She didn’t really know what love was, at first. She knew what it was supposed to feel like - she’s read about it in books nearly a million times, and movies talk about it twice as much. Not that she’s really one for movies. They’re too loud too often, and they’re always about love or death, especially the ones for adults. But that’s beside the point. Jo knew what love is supposed to feel like. People never shut up about it. She knew that she loved her dads, of course. And now, here at camp, she knows that she loves the Roanokes. Jen, Mal, Molly, Ripley… they’re her family. But that doesn’t mean she understands it. Before this, she always tried to pick it apart, like a broken radio, undoing the screws and greasing the hinges, tying wires together or picking them apart, trying to make it work for her. But it didn’t. She made algorithms for it, charted it when she felt it. None of it made sense. It still doesn’t make sense, not really. Even now that she’s read all about it - not the romanticized versions, but the philosophical ones, the scientific ones. Molly let her borrow a book she had about Plato, who wrote about the different types of love. That one really got her nowhere. But Jo thinks she understands love a little better now. She knows how it feels. The romantic type, at least. It’s the churning in her stomach when she holds April’s hand, the smile she gets when she hears April’s laugh. She loves April, in a way that’s different from how you love a friend. She’s not sure she can describe it. It’s just a feeling. When April passes her a note in the dead of night, up to her bunk, written in her neat scrawl and always signed with a heart - well, she’s sure there’s some love there. In the both of them, she thinks. They don’t talk about it. She thinks they’re both a little too scared, still, to even try to put it into words. But it’s there. It’s a part of their life. 

There’s something to be said for life, she thinks. 

Something to be said for all of this: the running about in the forest from sunset until dawn, from solving mysteries and cracking codes, to hanging out around a campfire with friends who are slowly becoming family, and then sneaking off to talk to her dads on the phone. It makes her feel so  _ alive _ , all of it, in a way she’s never really felt alive before. She once read that there was a difference between being alive and living. She always thought it was a silly poetic thing that some guy made up to make money, or sound profound, or just rub his important-looking quotation in other people’s faces. Now, she’s not so sure. She won’t say it out loud… but she’ll keep it in her head. There’s more to everything, and she knows it. Right now, where she is, at camp with her friends, she’s truly living. She’s happy. She’s free, free in a way she never thought she could be. 

There’s something to be said for this. 

She’ll be the one to say it.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> it's 10:14 yeehaw.


End file.
